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Who:
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Network of people of all races helping Black slaves to freedom
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What:
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Clandestine network dedicated to freeing Black slaves
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Where:
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United States, Canada, and overseas
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When:
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1500s to 1800s
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Why:
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Protested the injustice of slavery and started the abolitionist movement
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The Underground Railroad was perhaps the most dramatic protest action
against slavery in United States history and a crucial driving force in
the abolitionist movement. It was a network of clandestine escape networks
that began in the 1500s, and was later connected with organized
abolitionist activity of the 1800s.
The Underground Railroad can be understood as: a) The Flight from
Slavery to Freedom; b) The theft of self in the face of unjust laws;
c) The collaboration of Blacks and whites to rescue the enslaved in
defiance of the law; d) A challenge to doctrines of freedom, equality,
and justice; e) A fight against depersonalization and dehumanization;
f) A moral challenge to an immoral mindset; g) An ongoing lesson on the
role of Africans and their friends in the evolution of freedom.
The origin of the term "Underground Railroad" is alleged to have
originated with the 1831 escape of Tice Davids from his Kentucky
slaveowner. Davids fled across the Ohio River to Ripley, Ohio, where
he may have taken refuge with Rev. John Rankin, a prominent white
abolitionist whose hilltop home could be seen from the opposite shore.
The slaveowner, in hot pursuit, remarked that Davids had disappeared
as if through an "underground road". Rankin's influence in the
abolitionist movement would account for the rapid adoption of
the term.
Neither "underground" nor a "railroad", the escape network was
"underground" in the sense of “underground resistance”. This informal
system arose of secret routes, transportation, meeting points, safe
houses and other havens. Assistance maintained by abolitionist
sympathizers originated in the South, intertwined throughout the
North, and eventually ended in Canada as well as Mexico
or overseas.
These individuals were organized into small, independent groups who,
for the purpose of maintaining secrecy, knew of connecting "stations"
along the route, but few details of the Railroad beyond their immediate
area. Many individual links were via family relation. Escaped slaves
would pass from one waystation to the next, while steadily making
their way north. The diverse "conductors" on the Railroad counted
among their ranks free-born blacks, white abolitionists, former slaves,
and Native Americans.
Churches and religious denominations played key roles, especially the
Religious Society of Friends or “Quakers”, Congregationalists, and the
Wesleyan Church, as well as breakaway sects of mainstream denominations
such as the Free Methodists and American Baptists. Books, newspapers,
and other platforms disseminated the abolitionist viewpoint
nationwide.
In 1770, in the pre-Revolutionary colonial United States, Black slaves
produced three-quarters of the exports, but comprised only 18% of the
total population. But in the southern colonies slaves comprised 40% of
the population.
The American Revolution in 1776 succeeded in breaking the colonial
rule of Britain in the thirteen colonies that became the United States
of America. This new country, proclaiming democracy and freedom, allowed
for the maintenance of a vicious system of slavery.
In the meantime, slaves rebelled in any way they could. One of
those means of escape was the Underground Railroad, which was the main
escape route. Sometimes, the last stop was one of the "free states"
of New England. But Canada was widely considered to be the last stop
on the line. The North Star was the main reference point on the unwritten
maps that were followed.
It is estimated that at its height between 1810 and 1850, nearly 100,000
people escaped enslavement via the Underground Railroad, only a fraction
of the estimated four million slaves who were to eventually escape. The
Underground Railroad has captured the public imagination as a symbol
of freedom and figures prominently in African American and African
Canadian history.
It was not only American white abolitionists who helped slaves to
escape. Ottawa Indians in western Ohio, led by Chief Kinjeino, are among
the first reported to have helped fugitive Black slaves. And according
to one report: "Portuguese fisherman are said to have conspired with
members of the Shinnecock tribe to transport fugitive slaves from the
north shore of Long Island into ports of freedom in Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and Rhode Island."
William Still, often called “The Father of the Underground Railroad”,
helped hundreds of slaves to escape (as many as sixty slaves a month),
sometimes hiding them in his Philadelphia home. He kept careful
records, including short biographies of the people, that contained
frequent railway metaphors. Still maintained correspondence with many
of them, often acting as a middleman in communications between escaped
slaves and those left behind. He then published these accounts in the
book The Underground Railroad in 1872.
Mary Ann Shadd was one of the main advocates for slave "emigration"
from the U.S. to Canada. Though there were numerous debates among them,
Shadd worked from Canada with abolitionists in the U.S., including
Frederick Douglass, in the struggle against slavery.
Shadd was among the trusted conspirators who met with John Brown in
Windsor. There Brown, Shadd, Shadd's husband, her brother, a young
family friend named Osborne P. Anderson, and various others discussed
and refined plans for the Harpers Ferry rebellion.
John Brown, the white son of an Underground Railroad stationmaster
and a railroad conductor himself, led an armed insurrection to preserve
Kansas from slavery in May of 1856. During the events, Brown's forces
killed five men in revenge for an earlier attack by pro-slavery forces.
In December 1858, he set out with a group of eleven slave men, women
and children on a three-week journey of a thousand miles from Missouri
to Windsor, Canada, in the middle of winter.
In 1859, Brown and his guerrilla army of about twenty followers seized
a government arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in hopes of provoking a
slave rebellion. Brown was taken prisoner, tried for treason, and hanged.
To this day, Brown remains a martyred symbol of the heroic fight against
slavery in the U.S.
White conductors of the Underground Railroad, while still able to live
freely in society and not subjected to conditions of re-capture, were
nonetheless considered traitors of the most vile kind. Tarring and
feathering was one form of punishment for whites accused of supporting
the Black slaves. "Heated pine tar was applied from scalp to sole,
shriveling and blistering the skin. While the tar was still soft, goose
feathers were sprinkled over the body and occasionally lighted. Sometimes
the burning feathers ignited the tar. Cleaning up was even worse; as
clinging tar was peeled from the body, so was skin and flesh. Infection
was a near certainty."
Extreme and violent repression was met by anyone, slave or free, who
was identified with the Railroad. Henry "Box" Brown, for example, had
himself nailed into a wooden box by some carpenters known to the
Philadelphia Vigilance Committee. He traveled upside-down most of
his journey, but escaped safely to the north. The white Virginian who
helped him was sentenced to prison for a subsequent attempt to send
slaves as freight to their freedom. White solidarity was crucial to
many successful escapes.
In Hudson, Ohio, a white federal judge's wife kept a scarf on a statue
of a Black slave on her lawn as a symbol to fugitives. If the hitching
post had a flag, the runaway slaves were welcome for refuge. If there
was no flag, the judge was home and the shelter had to be passed by --
the Underground Railroad station was closed.
Over the various places where Underground Railroad stations existed,
there were places and times when an impressive level of organization was
in place. At other times, slaves simply ran away to escape from horrific
conditions of abuse, not knowing where their next stop would be or
where they were going. Although Canada was the often the main
destination of escape, not all those who escaped and tried to get
to Canada were able to survive the passage.
Estimates of the number of fugitives living in Canada from the U.S.
are around 40,000 to 60,000 in total in Ontario alone, which was where
the majority arrived.
Most of the fugitive slave routes went through New York, Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan; the nearest British territory was Ontario,
around the Niagara Peninsula and Windsor, Ontario. Other routes ended
in New Brunswick, Montreal, and other locations from California to
Vancouver Island. A traditional Negro spiritual reminded travellers
to "Follow the Drinkin' Gourd," which was an Africanized reference to
an asterism within the constellation Ursa Major that commonly was called
then, as it is today, the "Big Dipper". Two stars in its bowl point
to Polaris, or the North Star. Polaris is the brightest star in a
nearby Ursa Minor asterism, or the "Little Dipper", which pointed
the way due north to freedom. Runaways also crossed the southern
border to Mexico, or escaped to islands in the Caribbean. The Ohio
River and the Rio Grande marked the northern and southern borders
of the slave states.
Slaves were the property of the slave owners. In the eyes of the law,
they were no different than animals purchased for use like cattle on a
farm. It was therefore fully legal to inflict the cruelest and most
barbaric punishment on them for even the most minimal form of
disobedience.
In the South, planters instructed their "overseers" -- those put in
charge of disciplining the slaves -- to give twenty lashes for
"ordinary offenses" and thirty-nine for "more serious ones", but often
more were inflicted. And "more important than the number was the
vigour with which the lashes were laid down." The most serious crime
was escape.
Most slaves only knew their immediate vicinity. The fear of the unknown
was deepened by the badge of slavery they wore on their skin as Blacks
in a brutally racist society, making them open targets for re-capture
and punishment. The hounds were vicious. The dogs were trained to bite,
tear, and mutilate their prey. Sometimes slaves prone to escape were
considered worthless, and dogs were set upon them after they were
returned to their masters.
The conditions of slavery involved more than just physical abuse. Some
fled to be rejoined with loved ones who had been sold, often as a form
of punishment. Some had heard stories of a Promised Land where a vision
of freedom inspired their escape. All faced incredible risks, and had
no guarantee of living to see their freedom. But slavery did also exist
in Canada. Canada was not the Promised Land the slaves sang about and
risked their lives to reach.
Runaway slaves would escape on their own, but an elaborate system of
lanterns and markers could sometimes identify a station. The escaping
slaves traveled mostly at night, with some seeking secret codes like a
"P" for Pennsylvania marked on a rock.
Messages often were encoded so that only those active in the Railroad
would fully understand their meanings. For example, the following
message, "I have sent via at two o'clock four large and two small hams,
" clearly indicated that four adults and two children were sent by train
from Harrisburg to Philadelphia. However, the addition of the word
“via” indicated that they were not sent on the regular train, but
rather via Reading. In this case, the authorities went to the regular
train station in an attempt to intercept the runaways, while the
agent was able to meet them at the correct station and spirit them
to safety, where they eventually escaped to Canada. Another form
of secret messages was handmade quilts. Embedded in handmade slave
quilts were messages. When hung outside to air, each quilt
illustrated a specific code or message that conveyed important
information to those who were attempting to flee.
Quilt Codes
Because of the risk of discovery, information about routes and safe
havens was passed along only by word of mouth. Southern newspapers of
the day often were filled with pages of notices soliciting information
about escaped slaves and offering sizable rewards for their capture
and return. Professional bounty hunters pursued fugitives even as far
as Canada. Strong, healthy Blacks in their prime working and reproductive
years were highly valuable commodities, and it was common for free
Blacks to be kidnapped and sold into slavery. Certificates of
freedom -- signed, notarized statements attesting to the free status
of individual blacks -- could be easily destroyed and afforded their
owners little protection.
Although it was possible for escaped slaves to live free in many of
the northern states, it became increasingly dangerous after 1850. As a
result, foreign destinations such as Canada and overseas became more
and more desirable. The importation of slaves into Upper Canada had
been banned in 1793 by Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, and
slavery had since been abolished throughout the British Empire in 1833.
Fugitive slaves were a significant presence in the then-underpopulated
Canadian colonies and formed the basis of the present-day Black
population throughout Ontario. Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, and
until 1819, Florida was under the jurisdiction of Spain.
In some cases, special passages in houses were maintained for hiding
slaves, or special compartments were built in covered wagons for
transportation. Black conductors, such as Harriet Tubman, would usually
act as nighttime guides in order to avoid detection.
Sometimes slaves would travel during the day with a conductor who would
accompany them on to the next station. If a conductor was white, they
might pose as a master, or fake a funeral procession. Sometimes, white
infants were given to Black women to carry so the fleeing slaves
could pose as nannies.
Although sometimes the fugitives travelled on real railways, the primary
means of transportation were on foot or by wagon. The routes taken were
indirect, to throw off pursuers. The majority of the escapees are
believed to have been male field workers less than forty years old;
the journey was often too arduous and treacherous for women and children
to complete successfully.
It was common for fugitive bondsmen who had escaped via the Railroad
and established livelihoods as free men to purchase their mates, children
and other family members out of slavery, and then arrange to be reunited
with them. In this manner, the number of former slaves who owed
their freedom at least in part to the courage and determination of
those who operated the Underground Railroad was far greater than
the many thousands who actually traveled the clandestine
network.
Estimates are that in 1759, there were more than 1,000 slaves in
what is now Quebec, and as early as 1749, there were slaves in Halifax.
In 1783, Loyalist settlers fleeing the rebellious colonies that would
become the United States of America brought about 2,000 slaves to
Canada.
Slavery was abolished in Canada only when it was abolished throughout
the British Empire in 1834. The Loyalists who settled in Canada with their
slaves fled the United States because they remained loyal to the empire
that gave its support to the repression of rebellion in any form,
whether slave resistance or U.S. independence.
The first session of the first Parliament of Upper Canada in 1793
enacted a measure preventing the entry of slaves into the province. But
the law did not threaten the control of the white landowners by making
the practice of slavery illegal.
Any slave entering the province who came in on his or her own accord
was to be considered immediately free. But their children, born after
1793, would not be free until age twenty-five. And slaves already living
in Upper Canada would remain slaves for the rest of their lives.
By 1810 there were 1,164,000 slaves in the US. Only with the end of
the U.S. Civil War, when North and South clashed between 1861 and 1865,
was slavery in the U.S. finally abolished.
Terminology
The Underground Railroad developed its own jargon, which
continued the railway metaphor:
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